Days 44-45
I am actually writing this from Kumily, a mountain resort next to the Periyar Wildlife Park. We went on our a hilariously farcical Safari yesterday, which you will be able to read about in my next post. For this one I will just concentrate on the temple town of Madurai in Tamil Nadu that we visited following Mysore.
The platforms at Mysore train station were extremely clean, they could almost have been mistaken for a non Indian station, but while the smell from the tracks was not quite as piercing as other stations there was still no doubt that the odd passer by used it to relieve himself. The train with a substantially higher number of cockroaches pulled out punctual as ever through the countryside before filling up with passengers at Bangalore from where we were given our bed sheets for the night. These though were pointless for myself as my bed bug bites were starting to tickle and itch making sleep impossible. The more I ignored them the worse they got until I would scratch, which of course would make the itch worse still and would start of the itch on some other area of my body. For the record the swells from the bites have died down and I estimate I got somewhere between 200 - 300 bites.
The train pulled into Madurai on Saturday (6th) morning more or less on time and we soon found a suitable hotel small, but clean, which proved to be a little pricier than we have been accustomed to in the south. India's most southern state of Tamil Nadu has its own language Tamil and is also home to Dravidian architecture, perhaps the most recognisable style of Indian architecture with its vivid colours and carvings. The Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai is considered the peak of this architure and is typical of a southern temple complex. It is also the sole reason for our stop in Madurai. Maduari is an ancient city and the temple has always been at its centre. It has been destroyed, rebuilt and expanded, but its current form was shaped in the 17th century. It forms a huge square complex slap bang in the middle of the city and is surrounded by 14 Gopurams, which are wedge shaped gateway towers that are adored with a bewildered display of deity and demon statues.
After trying to recuperate a few hours rest in our hotel we set of into the city to visit the temple. Madurai is a busy city, more hectic than most in South India and the cycle rickshaw even made an isolated reappearance. We arrived at the temple and as usual we had to remove our shoes, only this time for some unanswerable reason we had to remove our socks as well. We attempted to wander the temple complex in our bare feet but the ground was just too hot and dirty, so we broke the rules and stuck our socks back on. We worked our way around the temple until we got closer to the core. Within it there are smaller temples, halls and pools. The pillared halls in particular are lavishly decorated with murals and sculptures, although the inner sanctuary is off limits to non-Hindus. Impressive and all that it is, a few hours is enough to see the temple and we were soon back through the searing heat for lunch. To be fair Madurai has other sights, but the Lonely Planet guide did not make them sound very enticing so it was just the formalities of dinner and sleep in Madurai before we were off again for a 4 hour bus journey into the Western Ghats and the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary.
Every bus in India has an incredibly loud horn and some have ridiculous melodies to go with it. Our bus on Sunday (7th) morning had a another unique feature to the horn; it seemed to be turned to sound on the inside! This and our position at the front of the bus prompted my wife to make use of her ear plugs for the length of the bus ride. I declined but I may have reduced by hearing by 25%. The bus was very crowded and for the final hour of the trip I had a companion who took great delight in striking up a conversation. His English was not that good, but this did not deter him from blaming his lack of understanding on my pronunciation after each statement I made. To increase communication, for words that he didn't understand he had me type them into his phone, however this did not usually help his understanding. However as we zigzagged our way into the hills we passed by huge water pipes and my new friend was able to tell me was that at the heart of Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary is a dammed lake built by the British. The lake, along with tunnels through the mountains provides irrigation to the Tamil Nadu side of the watershed. These days the head of water from the lake also helps drive electricity generators for the towns of south west Tamil Nadu.
We continued to climb into the mountains and we reached the small resort town of Kumily just across the border in the state of Kerala. The bus stopped at the border and we walked across the state border to Kerala, our final state in India.
I am actually writing this from Kumily, a mountain resort next to the Periyar Wildlife Park. We went on our a hilariously farcical Safari yesterday, which you will be able to read about in my next post. For this one I will just concentrate on the temple town of Madurai in Tamil Nadu that we visited following Mysore.
The platforms at Mysore train station were extremely clean, they could almost have been mistaken for a non Indian station, but while the smell from the tracks was not quite as piercing as other stations there was still no doubt that the odd passer by used it to relieve himself. The train with a substantially higher number of cockroaches pulled out punctual as ever through the countryside before filling up with passengers at Bangalore from where we were given our bed sheets for the night. These though were pointless for myself as my bed bug bites were starting to tickle and itch making sleep impossible. The more I ignored them the worse they got until I would scratch, which of course would make the itch worse still and would start of the itch on some other area of my body. For the record the swells from the bites have died down and I estimate I got somewhere between 200 - 300 bites.
The train pulled into Madurai on Saturday (6th) morning more or less on time and we soon found a suitable hotel small, but clean, which proved to be a little pricier than we have been accustomed to in the south. India's most southern state of Tamil Nadu has its own language Tamil and is also home to Dravidian architecture, perhaps the most recognisable style of Indian architecture with its vivid colours and carvings. The Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai is considered the peak of this architure and is typical of a southern temple complex. It is also the sole reason for our stop in Madurai. Maduari is an ancient city and the temple has always been at its centre. It has been destroyed, rebuilt and expanded, but its current form was shaped in the 17th century. It forms a huge square complex slap bang in the middle of the city and is surrounded by 14 Gopurams, which are wedge shaped gateway towers that are adored with a bewildered display of deity and demon statues.
After trying to recuperate a few hours rest in our hotel we set of into the city to visit the temple. Madurai is a busy city, more hectic than most in South India and the cycle rickshaw even made an isolated reappearance. We arrived at the temple and as usual we had to remove our shoes, only this time for some unanswerable reason we had to remove our socks as well. We attempted to wander the temple complex in our bare feet but the ground was just too hot and dirty, so we broke the rules and stuck our socks back on. We worked our way around the temple until we got closer to the core. Within it there are smaller temples, halls and pools. The pillared halls in particular are lavishly decorated with murals and sculptures, although the inner sanctuary is off limits to non-Hindus. Impressive and all that it is, a few hours is enough to see the temple and we were soon back through the searing heat for lunch. To be fair Madurai has other sights, but the Lonely Planet guide did not make them sound very enticing so it was just the formalities of dinner and sleep in Madurai before we were off again for a 4 hour bus journey into the Western Ghats and the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary.
Every bus in India has an incredibly loud horn and some have ridiculous melodies to go with it. Our bus on Sunday (7th) morning had a another unique feature to the horn; it seemed to be turned to sound on the inside! This and our position at the front of the bus prompted my wife to make use of her ear plugs for the length of the bus ride. I declined but I may have reduced by hearing by 25%. The bus was very crowded and for the final hour of the trip I had a companion who took great delight in striking up a conversation. His English was not that good, but this did not deter him from blaming his lack of understanding on my pronunciation after each statement I made. To increase communication, for words that he didn't understand he had me type them into his phone, however this did not usually help his understanding. However as we zigzagged our way into the hills we passed by huge water pipes and my new friend was able to tell me was that at the heart of Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary is a dammed lake built by the British. The lake, along with tunnels through the mountains provides irrigation to the Tamil Nadu side of the watershed. These days the head of water from the lake also helps drive electricity generators for the towns of south west Tamil Nadu.
We continued to climb into the mountains and we reached the small resort town of Kumily just across the border in the state of Kerala. The bus stopped at the border and we walked across the state border to Kerala, our final state in India.
Hi Matt, Still enjoying your Blog, Am pleasantly surprised at your skill as a writer (big difference from the C**p I got from you in work). But what is with all the back of the head pics? ;-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael, Good to feel appreciated! I'm glad you are enjoying it. Back of the head shots are for some level of anonymity for us and also to prove we are both still alive at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete